As a writer, it took me a long time to realize that 50% of my strengths lie in being a good re-writer. So in a first draft I try to get good bones laid down, don't spend a whole lot of time looking back or making sentences pretty instead of getting information and emotion down there on the page. I'll write digressions and flashbacks down, no matter how long they are -- they help me picture where the character is coming from, or at, and they can be excised (or moved to a better place plotwise or expanded into their own section) entirely.

Anything worth writing is worth overwriting, so long as you have the Red Pen of Death ready for the edit phase. :-)

(And of course, I know very good writers whose first drafts are impeccable from the get-go. Figuring out that this wasn't my style helped a whole lot.)

Also, if people believe that the baby is the husband's posthumous child, they might look upon Anna's marriage as a very practical move on her part, right?

Well, she's not going to marry the other guy right away--I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I'm going to have various circumstances tear them apart before she tells him she's pregnant, and possibly before she's sure of it herself. And it's going to take them (and me!) some time to solve all the barriers to their marriage. She's an officer's widow and an heiress; he's a sergeant who hopes to go home someday and take over his parents' inn in Pastoral English County to Be Named Later.

So she's somewhat lucky that people will assume the baby is her husband's, because it spares her from being viewed as a Fallen Woman until everything gets sorted out, but she feels guilty over the fact that if the baby is a boy (which I'll probably make it be, because why spare a chance to add guilt and angst?) and viewed as her husband's legitimate child, he'll be heir presumptive to a barony, and she doesn't think it right that he might inherit under false pretenses. Throw in the husband's mother who just wants to treasure what she thinks is her grandchild and it's a regular guilt-o-rama.

Susan, Mary Balogh did almost the exact same sort of plot in Web of Love, though with the twist that the widow had truly loved her husband, the person reached for for post-battle comfort was his attractive good friend.

You might want to check it out to see how she balanced it all and made the characters ones you could feel for throughout.

the thing that gets me stuck most often is the feeling that I have to get things perfect out of the box.

Yes, THIS. Just write down the bad phrase and move on.

Susan, a mantra I cling to is "Start where the trouble starts." Does the trouble actually start while she's still married, or does it start after she's already a widow? If so, you can present the character as a widow who knows she ought to grieve more than she does, so the reader never really commits to the old marriage.

Susan, a mantra I cling to is "Start where the trouble starts." Does the trouble actually start while she's still married, or does it start after she's already a widow? If so, you can present the character as a widow who knows she ought to grieve more than she does, so the reader never really commits to the old marriage.

I can always go back and rewrite if I change my mind, but I really think it starts while she's still married. At least, I've got an opening scene stuck in my brain that I'm going to run with for now.

Pastoral English County to Be Named Later

Ooh, lovely! I vacationed there once....

And if it turns out that starting while she's married doesn't work, could your opening scene work recast as a flashback?

Quite possibly, though it's looking like several scenes, maybe as much as two or three chapters worth at this point. I want to have Anna and Jack meet and develop a rapport, then have a few scenes with Anna and her husband that illustrate the tensions in their marriage, maybe another nice friendly scene or two with Jack, and then she gets the word that her husband is dead.

Pastoral English County to Be Named Later

It's actually called "Washbasin-on-the-Drainboard" on the OS maps....

Anyone around?

I've just written my bio for the launch party announcement, as requested by Ed Kaufman, and it needs some serious beta reading, for tone and clarity.

It's supposed to be longish (he said so - that way, he can chop), and I'm trying for a particular feel.

I'm here, taking posting breaks between mindnumbingly boring work tasks....